Can occur match phrases that stretch across multiple lines?

Question

Q: (how) can I use occur to match a phrase that stretches over multiple lines?

Consider the following buffer:

Here's a line of text with the phrase "kittens and puppies".
Here's an awkward alternative: the phrase "kittens and
puppies" stretches across two lines.
Here's a false positive: "kittens and otters".

I'd like to identify all the locations in the buffer that contain the phrase "kittens and puppies". If I use occur, however, the following two problems arise:

• the phrase "kittens and puppies" matches only the first line, and not the second/third where the phrase wraps over a line break.
• the phrase "kittens" (or "kittens and") also matches the false positive on the last line.

How, if at all, can I use occur to locate the relevant lines in the buffer -- those that contain the entire phrase, or the beginning of one that wraps across lines? If occur can't do it, is there an occur-like alternative that can?

Answer 1

The easiest might be (occur "kittens[ ]and[ ]puppies" nil)

If you use occur interactively, you can insert the actual newlines with C-q C-j. If you use the above lisp snippet, you can replace the newlines by \n: (occur "kittens[ \n]and[ \n]puppies" nil)